Hawaii is one of the handful of states that maintain a gun registry.
They know every lawfully held firearm in the state and who has it. As a
result, it was easy for law enforcement to compare the two databases and
figure out who owned guns and was getting medical marijuana.

The problem remains, as the Honolulu police are happy to state, "Federal law prohibits firearm possession for unlawful users of
controlled substances. Pot is classified as a controlled substance under federal law." So just saying, "I'm a medical user, I'm not an addict fercrissakes" would go nowhere in a federal court.

December 22, 2017

My high- altitude mountaineering is limited to peaks in the Rockies and Cascades, but I have a couple of times seen . . . personality changes . . . at altitude.

In a new study of psychotic episodes at extreme altitudes, researchers have determined that high-altitude psychosis
is a stand-alone medical illness, rather than a condition stemming from
acute altitude sickness as had been previously believed.

High-altitude
psychosis is a fairly well-known illness and is frequently mentioned in
mountain literature. For example, a mountaineer may suddenly think he
is being chased, start talking nonsense or change his route without any
real reason.

Nepal officials estimate that about 200 bodies remain scattered across
Everest. A few are so familiar, so well preserved by the subfreezing
temperatures, that they serve as macabre mileposts for the living,
including one corpse commonly called Green Boots.

Others are better-identified:

Not far from where they found Ghosh’s body that morning was another body
that Dawa Finjhok Sherpa estimated had been there for five or six
years. And somewhere nearby, they knew, was the body of a doctor from
Alabama who had died a few days before. There was no plan to bring it
down.

Yes, leaving the body means there is more money in the estate for the heirs, right? Bringing a body off Everest is expensive!

But some Bengali families were willing to pay, for their own cultural reasons, which makes a fascinating New York Times Magazine story, "Deliverance from 27,000 Feet." Excellent, unflinching photography too.

La Niña is predicted to persist through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2017-18 by nearly all models in the IRI/CPC plume [Fig. 6] and in the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME; [Fig. 7]).
Based on the latest observations and forecast guidance, forecasters
favor the peak of a weak-to-moderate La Niña during the winter (3-month
Niño-3.4 values between -0.5°C and -1.5°C). In summary, La Niña is
likely (exceeding ~80%) through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2017-18,
with a transition to ENSO-neutral most likely during the mid-to-late
spring (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome for each 3-month period).
La Niña is anticipated to affect temperature and precipitation across
the United States during the upcoming months (the 3-month seasonal
temperature and precipitation outlooks will be updated on Thursday
December 21st). The outlooks generally favor above-average temperatures
and below-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United
States, and below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation
across the northern tier of the United States.

December 17, 2017

M. has been fuming at the grocery store. Avocados, $2 apiece. It seems like a lot — and I know that many are just thrown away or, sometimes, end up in the donations for the bears at the wildlife rehab center. (We watch the cartons unloaded with undisguised envy, but those furry guys need the calories!)

There is drought. And there is organized crime. (I am surprised no one is talking about "blood avocados.")

The autodefensas have
been returning houses and farms to the original owners or their
families, because in many cases they were murdered after signing a deed
at gunpoint, leaving the farms to the criminal bands' leaders, who
assaulted the properties bringing a public lawyer, who many times also
by gunpoint validated such operations.

In recent years [...] due to the rise of smartphones, the compact
digital camera market has been shrinking rapidly, leading to a
significant decrease in operating rate at NIC and creating a difficult
business environment.

But look on eBay. You can find digital pocket cameras for pocket change. A like-new Nikon Coolpix, with case and cord, probably made about 2010, cost under $30, shipping included. If I had wanted an earlier model, I could have paid much less.

Why buy it? The biggest reason is peace of mind. That little Nikon will be in my pocket on next weekend's mountain camp-out. It will go on hunting trips, hikes, etc.

Which is worse, to drop your smartphone in the river while trying to photograph that cute muskrat while you're fly-fishing, or to splash a $15 camera you got on eBay?

Smartphones do have their strengths. My fingers were almost touching mine one evening last week in Boston, when I saw the driver of an immaculate white Range Rover — she looked like an oligarch's mistress in it — deliberately ram the rear bumper of a taxi that was not clearing the intersection fast enough to suit her. Never mind that he had nowhere to go forward.

I could have put it on Facebook or Instagram, maybe made a looping GIF ("Ram! Ram! Ram!"). But I didn't.